Everything You Need to Know About Tomahawk Missiles, and Why We're Using Them in Syria

On Thursday evening, the United States launched nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles at a military air base to the southeast of the Syrian city of Homs. These weapons were sent with the deliberate intent to destroy facilities and equipment, but to minimize the loss of life. How is something like that done? The short answer is, "very carefully."

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

The United States military has a vast body of written material that provides instructions on how to do just about everything. En masse, this material is known as "doctrine," and while it is not definitive, it does represent the collected experiences and generally-agreed-upon best methods for accomplishing any given task, from the tactical up through the operational level. In the military, the use of long-range weapons is collectively known as the "employment of fires." This includes everything from mortars to artillery to missiles and bombs.

When more than one service (say, the Navy and the Air Force) contributes to the equation, it is known as "Joint Fires," and of course, there is doctrine for that, as well as entire courses of instruction on how to plan for and use these weapons. These courses involve learning the specific characteristics of each type of weapon in the entire American inventory, as well as a detailed methodology for examining issues like "collateral damage."

(If you get lost in the acronyms there, you can use the official dictionary to walk you through things. It's like the OED for things that go "boom.")

Getty

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Which brings us to the specifics of Thursday night's attack.

Almost no commander ever comes up with a mission all by himself. Rather, be it the president or any lower level commander, he asks for options to accomplish an intent. Planners then work up a range of choices from which that commander might select his preference. That appears to have been the case this time. Every one of these variants has associated costs, risks, and differing probabilities of success. Trump, it appears, selected one of the lesser choices with the higher probability of success in accomplishing a fairly limited task. That brings us to the specifics of the weapons employed in this case, the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM).

The Tomahawk was first deployed almost 35 years ago and since then it has gone through several upgrades and variants, but the basic design has remained the same. Most of these are either improvements to the guidance system or the engine. Although originally created with versions for ground launching by the Army, air launching by the Air Force, and sea launching (both surface ships and submarines,) only the Navy now has these missiles. Similarly, while there were once versions that carried nuclear warheads, or could be used in an anti-ship role, both of those capabilities went away over the years as well. Now there are only two basic options. One is a pure high-explosive version while the other can strew smaller bomblets across a wider area. This latter is especially useful when attacking "soft" targets like trucks and parked aircraft.

At this point, we do not know the specific mix of missiles launched Thursday night. But since the intent was to go after such "soft" targets, like aircraft and fuel storage, and not the hardened locations of the actual nerve agent used by the Syrians (since that would likely result in the release of a lot of the poison) it seems likely that area-effect warheads made up at least some of the mix.

Getty

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

The Tomahawk was fairly revolutionary when it first came into service in the early '80s in that it was able to fly at extremely low-levels using a pre-programmed route and extremely detailed map data. The launching system varied with the type of missile: Obviously the ones on USAF aircraft could simply be dropped. The Army and Navy versions were boosted into the sky with an initial rocket, but when they got up to speed (about 550 mph) the rocket would drop off and the air intake for the internal jet engine would pop out, as would a pair of stubby wings. Once launched, the missile could then drop down to the planned altitude, and, using downward pointed radar altimeter, compare the actual radar data with the pre-planned route to ensure that it was on course. Later versions added GPS and even more sophisticated computer programming. With improved engines (and better fuel efficiency), the Tomahawk gained the ability to change the throttle along the way as well as do things like loiter in an area awaiting additional instructions to hit any one of several pre-planned targets or go to an entirely new one. The most modern of these weapons is known simply as the "Block IV," and that is the likely variant used Thursday.

So why use the Tomahawk instead of, for example, attack jets? The latter would be able to carry more munitions and be able to hit a wider range of targets. In choosing the Tomahawk (as well as limiting the number used to just a few dozen) Trump was sending a secondary message as well. As a point of comparison, in 1998 during a retaliatory mission against Saddam Hussein's Iraq known as Operation Desert Fox, we launched some 450 TLAMs, while during the actual 2003 invasion, the Navy fired more than 800 of them.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Additionally, the Tomahawk meant that no Americans would have to actually go into harm's way. With "triple digit" Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs) like the S-300 and S-400 supplied to Syria by the Russians, any such manned attack would have carried with it a much higher risk. To even contemplate that sort of mission the aircraft would need to do an extensive series of ancillary "Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses" (SEAD) missions, just to get to the target in the first place. And that would mean killing Russian soldiers, which would be a really significant escalation to say the least.

Finally, with a range of about 1,000 miles, the Tomahawks could be launched from far enough out to sea that the ships doing the launching would be in no danger from Syrian-launched anti-ship missiles, yet they would still have the fuel/range to be able to follow a complex and very low-level route to the targets. That course could be plotted to keep them well away from any Russian units or air-defense systems. (The Syrians themselves use the older and less-sophisticated S-200 series air-defense missiles.) By following the terrain at an extremely low altitude, the Tomahawks are also much less vulnerable to being shot down themselves.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.